On another note - THANK YOU to everyone who has helped me so far. I love how everyone is jumping on board to help me out - I am so thankful for your input. What a fantastic group <3
Regarding @Jeremy_Spencer first comment those 3300 18650 batteries pump out a lot of juice they may be able to run those matrix’s but that is a whole lot of LEDs i never thought to wear that many lol
@Kiah_Hickson oh yeah this group is amazing. And these guys are geniuses. Im still pretty new myself lol
@Cristian_Martinez haha, I’m like… go big or go home. I’m hoping to get a lot of press about the dress, as I’m using it as a concept piece to start a conversation about the future of wearable tech + women in tech + how wearable tech breaks down barriers (e.g. disabilities + access to technology in particular coding education).
I deliver a program on behalf of CoderFactory + Commonwealth Bank (based in Sydney, Au) to female high school students (I teach them Ruby on Rails and we solve a problem w/ the school/ community by building a web app) + do a lot of mentoring + speaking at high schools. When I show them the dress it opens a doorway of possibilities I don’t think they knew were possible or even included code. I wrote an article on why I decided to invest my time and money into building this dress below, if you’re interested to know more.
Wow. All i do is wear my LED clothing to church lol. And im working on some heart shaped PCBs for my little sister. Im sure shes jealous that my bro gets all the cool tech (even if it is handed down cuz i get new tools and PCBs lol
@Kiah_Hickson i see on that page you talk a lot about how people never realized code could be used in such a wonderful way. Im my personal experience the people who see the stuff i wear have a different view. They have no idea how long it freaking takes to make something and troubleshoot and fix mistakes until you get something that works. They look at a flashy tie and go “thats cool” then my mom tells them about all the long hours spent hand soldering and designing my own boards and splicing code together frankenstein style and then they go “wow, i had no idea it was so complicated” i guess i make it look easy or something O.o lol
@Cristian_Martinez it’s one piece (top) of a performer’s costume. Think 8ft Time-traveling Disco Yeti Scientist From Outer Space 
@Cristian_Martinez I agree I think people are used to cheap blinky party favors and think what we’re doing is the same thing. Or think you can just buy it on Amazon 
good thing we don’t do it for THEM. I’m glad your mom is telling them what’s what- she sounds rad
@Kiah_Hickson these are all strips which I’ve mounted on foam interfacing (fabric stabilizer). Ws2812bs 60/m. Are you using different types of LEDs? Are your matrices also neopixel? If so it shouldn’t be difficult to incorporate them all in the same map. You just need to figure out how the matrices are laid out (First Light sketch should be helpful) and then treat those matrix LEDs as a individuals like the rest. If they are different chipsets it will be harder if they different timing protocols. I think someone was trying to do that on here recently but not sure if it was resolved.
So far the amount of LEDs hasn’t really been a problem beyond the extra soldering involved. I had to add additional power injections and on lower gauge wire than I usually need. I initially had it mapped as 1 long strip but the frame rate was way too slow and choppy (which I expected). I really hesitated doing the parallel output, I think I actually over-researched it. But it was actually not difficult at all code-wise. I did somehow manage to burn out a pin on the Teensy and had a large capacitor catch fire somehow… still not sure what happened there but I’m only using 6 output pins of 8 so just remapped it onto the 7th output. Gotta be resourceful! Feel free to message me and I’ll send you other build pics of this and other LED costumes I’ve done.
I think your mission is fantastic btw. The only reason I got into this is because my oldest daughter came home from Kindergarten 2 years ago and told me that “girls like art and boys like science”. I am a painter and occasional costume designer, so she thought I would confirm this trope she picked up from some other girl 
. What a crazy amount I’ve learned since then and it’s barely the tip of the iceberg!
@Lloyd_Emelle i didn’t think the tinyTILE was supported by FastLED?
@Kiah_Hickson re: combining different types of leds in the mapping process…
Different types of pixels can be used together, they just need to each be setup correctly in the setup() section.
Even if using pixels with the same type of chip, one thing to check right away is if they both use the same RGB color order (different manufacturers swap things around). If they do, great! If not you’ll need to break things up in setup to specify the color order for each. Or you could still code for everything as normal, and then have a subroutine that runs right before FastLED.show() is called that swaps around/corrects the color order for a portion of the pixels.
If you’re using all the same type of pixel, and the RGB color order is the same then the strips and matrices could be combined and treated as one continuous string (with Data going from one to the next). However, that might make coding more difficult so you still might want them separate.
Have a look at this page:
And the “multiple” examples:
As far as wiring, if you power different sections with different batteries just make sure all the grounds are connected together from everything.
@Kiah_Hickson LMS303 Looks fine, stick with what you know if it works!
@Kiah_Hickson totally! I think if you are doing anything with teensy then it will likely work with curie enabled board which has good sensors. I do have the code for gif conversion; I’ll post it on github this week and share with you.
@Stuart_Taylor yes I had trouble in the past with fastLED, though that was with arduino IDE. Might have luck with it using a lower level language like c, but for this project I think she can get by with neopixel
For power consumption estimates, take a look at this if you’re on iOS: LEDstimator by Robert Atkins
I also recommend using external iPad battery packs for power. Easy to charge and you get a nice regulated 5V out of them. Search the group for some recent recommendations for a model that tolerates being wired together in parallel for increased power output. Anker, I think?